Sermon on the Mount

Matthew chapter 6 from verse 5. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogue, and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly, I tell you they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.

Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him. This then is how you should pray. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil 1. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.

Good evening, everybody. Someone once told me when you're preaching you should wear trousers and a shirt. I'm trying really hard not to resent that person right now, preaching here on the scent of the sun as it feels. My name is Steve. Welcome to Cornerstone.

Great to see so many of you here tonight, and welcome to the live stream stream if you're watching at home in a bath of ice. I assume. Tonight, we're continuing on our sermon series. It's been doing for the last few weeks, looking at the sermon on the Mount, which is Jesus' preaching epic. It's long, it's expansive, it's deep, and it really is very, very broad in all the topics that it's hitting.

And he just starts to hit on a lot of different points, and he's trying to show people who are listening both in the first century and the 20 first century, us here today. That surface level righteousness is not what Jesus is about. Surface level righteousness is not what God wants from his people. And actually, if you want to enter the king of heaven, surface level hypocritical Russian just isn't gonna cut it. Paul Lammon, I mentioned this verse in his sermon last week and read it again.

Chapter five:twenty says this. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. It's the words of Jesus. Then he goes on to walk us simply through multiple topics really highlighting how often we fall into this trap of thinking that surface level good works. Without a heart that's been transformed by the gospel will be good enough for the lord.

That we've seen so far. And tonight, we're here looking at the topic of prayer. So before we do that, I'm going to pray. Heavenly father. We have read this passage now, and many of us will have heard it many times before.

We do pray for your help now. We need you to talk to us, to speak from your word, to challenge our hearts to how we approach the subject of prayer and this surface level righteousness that are so common in society today and way back when in the first century as well. Please be with us now. Please speak to us now and help us to address this issue. Our men.

If you've been on the internet for a while, you might have come across a service called masterclass. Now I asked Ben if he'd seen it at the beginning of the service and he hadn't. And Ben is a pretty good barometer for what's going on the internet. So I'm now slightly worried that here has ever heard of it before. Catherine has, that's good.

That's at least 1. For those who haven't, the premise is pretty simple. It's online lessons in a video format to teach you how to do a certain thing really, really well. Fin's nodding. That's good.

How to improve on something, how to remove bad habits, and how to get an expert opinion on whatever it is this thing that you're trying to learn. But the selling point of the platform isn't the lessons itself, so much as it is the teachers who are providing them. And what masterclass calls the world's best, the world's best. So if you're into tennis, poopers, And you want to improve your game, work on your backhand, your forehand and other stuff. I don't know.

Backhand. Forehand. I need to I need to sign up apparently. Serena Williams, window of 23 grand slams has a masterclass from you. For you, and you can learn from the best.

Or if you're more like me and you love basketball, then Steph and Curry, 1 of my heroes. 2 time MVP has been in all star 6 times. It's arguably 1 of the greatest point guards in the history of the game. Can teach you shooting, dribbling, and ball handling skills. If you don't like sports and actually you want to improve in the kitchen, then 7 star Michelin Chef, Gordon Ramsay, will teach you how to fillet and sort a and other things that you do in the kitchen.

I had no clue. Frickochet, maybe. I don't know. Or if you're into music, everyone for Finn. And you want to learn what it takes to make a guitar really sing, really, really sing, then 10 time Grammy award winning artist Carlos Santana Exactly.

Ken teach you, and this is a quote from the website, the art and soul of guitar. How fantastic does that sound? The world's best. Teaching this thing that they know so well and so intimately because they've been doing it for so long. They've ran up their 10000 hours that they need to become a master in whatever it is they're trying to teach.

Now Matthew chapter 6 verses 5 to 15 is Jesus's masterclass on prayer. He is the world's best because prayer is in its simplest terms just talking to God. God the father in this case, in Jesus example. And Jesus has been doing that since before time began, so he's more than wrapped up his 10000 hours. Now prayer is a great privilege.

And in 1 sense, it is really, really easy as we've already said. It's just talking to God. But Jesus shows us here in this passage that actually it is very easy for us to be very, very bad at prayer. 1 of the big risk with prayer, I think, particularly when we're looking at this passage, is that because it's so familiar to many of us, actually, we'll approach it very casually. The words almost kind of roll off our tongue.

We've said it so many times. We grew up in school saying it in church saying it to some of us. And actually, we kind of forget what we're praying and who we're actually praying to. That's 1 risk. Another risk is the opposite of that, and that actually we treat prayer far too formally.

We forget that Jesus says actually is just simply children talking to their father. There's a 2 of the risks that we might come across. Now as I've been preparing for this, I've noticed 2 things. 1, I'm incredibly incredibly bad at prayer. God has really convinced me of that as I've been preparing.

But also, there's an element of futinity in trying to cram these 10 verses as it were, 11 verses into 1 sermon. They really should be a series all on their own. However, we'll do what we can here tonight. This should use his master class on prayer. And he masterfully addresses these And he breaks it down for us in a really simple way for us to see how we should be approaching prayer.

So, hopefully tonight, we're gonna see the following points. Who we should be praying to? Why we should be praying? How we should pray and what we should pray. To who, why, how and what of prayer.

And there will be some overlap in those points, some of the who's might fall into the why's and some of the why's will fall into the what's and so on. But we'll get hopefully a holistic view of what's going on. So you ready? No one's melting. Silence.

Well, it's a good sign. Not really. First point, Who are we praying to in a down at verse 5 with me? Says this, when you pray, do not be like the hippogriffs. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues on the street corners to be seen by others.

Truly, I tell you, they have received their award in full. The first thing that Jesus is addressing here is this hypocritical way that some people, the teacher of the law and the pharisees, have been praying, the ways they've been adopting prayer. It's loud It's proud, it's in your face. And at first glance, it seems very impressive, actually. But it's surface level righteousness, and Jesus says, at its hypocrisy.

You see, these people, they pray to God outwardly, but really who are they actually praying to? Who are they all about in their prayers? In 1 sense, you might say they're praying to God, but the act is actually all about other people. Is it not? And Jesus calls these people Hippocrats, because obviously prayer fundamentally is core is talking to God.

It's building a relationship of love and trust and dependency on our heavenly father. And these guys are trying to pretend that they have a great relationship with God. But in reality, they don't even talk to him. They're too busy talking to other people. They're trying to communicate with others around them how great they are, and prayer just happens to be the medium in which they choose to do it.

It's completely lost sight of the who they're meant to be praying to. Do we see how how crazy that is? It's a it's a bit like if I took my wife Emma out for an anniversary dinner to the the best restaurant ever in the world to to really celebrate. Went to Nando's Really splash the cash. And the waiter comes up to us and says, hi, what would you like to drink?

Actually, there's the dangers in work for us are immediately because the drink's on the side is in Nando's. But he comes up Imagine he comes up and says, what would you like to drink? And I say, Emma, my darling. I love you so much. I'm so proud to be your husband, your the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Let's get a bottle of champagne to celebrate how amazing you are. Wait to please a bottle of your finest champagne, Nando's finest. And the waiter walks off, and then I proceed to not look at Emma, completely ignore her, not talk to her, not engage her in any way shape or form, and she's kind of saying, Steve. Hi, Steve. Hello?

And it's completely ignored. The waiter comes back and I jump back into it. Again, I'm saying, I love you so much with it. I can't believe how fortunate I am to be married to you and I kind of gush and gush and gush. And wait for this like, wow, this guy really loves his wife.

This is amazing. He's such a good husband. And he walks off and I go back again to not talk them to Emma. As you know Emma, you know that 1 will go down very well. How awful would that be?

You can't really expect to have a good relationship with your beloved if you treat them that way. And that's what these people are doing when they approach prayer this They forget who they're praying to. What a privilege you're giving up if you're treating prayer this way? You have the opportunity to talk to the creator God. Literally, the fount of all knowledge and wisdom.

Who knows everything? And actually, you're more concerned with being seen by others. Now it seems crazy, but can we get like this? Can we find ourselves in these situations where we're praying more to others than we are to the lord? Now look, you might be seeing here tonight and thinking, well, this isn't really me.

I'm I'm a relatively quiet person. I I don't really even pray out loud ever when it's caught at prayer. But if you're thinking that, I wanna say, we have to go deeper. Because remember, Jesus in this sermon is attacking surface level us. He's challenging our hearts, and this is a challenge that isn't just for loud outgoing people.

It's symptomatic of a casual approach to prayer, which is risk 1 that I mentioned at the beginning, where the focus isn't on the lord but on others. So if you never pray out loud in front of other people, because you're scared of looking silly in front of them or what they might think if you say something wrong, wrong. Then maybe it's possible that you have this same problem of a heart that Jesus is addressing here. Of the who you're most concerned about when you pray. So don't pray on street corners to be seen by others But don't not pray in front of others because you're scared to be seen by them.

Look at the example in verse 9 that Jesus gives. This then is how you should pray. Our father in heaven hallowed be your name. Our father in heaven hallowed be your name. That line on its own warrants its own sermon, doesn't it?

Who jesus sprang to? His father The 1 he loves, the 1 he adores. The 1 who throughout all time and all history, he has been 1 with its intimate, deeply, deeply intimate. God is actually only referred to as Father 14 times in the Old Testament. And Jesus refers to God as father 17 times in the sun on the mount alone.

That shows a level of love that would have completely blown the minds of the first century Jewish audience who we hear in Jesus preach this. There's no concern for others think when he's preaching. When he's praying. Sorry. He's not concerned about looking good in front of others.

He's focused fully on his father. But then he follows up God being Father by saying hallowed be your name. What does hallowed mean? Well, hallowed means holy, revered, sacred. It's not casual, anything but casual.

We pray here to our hallowed heavenly father. Do you see how that is the the perfect balance of familiarity and reverence? The perfect balance. So who are you praying to? Are you praying to others around you?

Are you praying so casually that there's no hallowing of God's name? Let's all strive for this perfect balance of Jesus shows here. That's the who. Second point why? Why are you praying?

Look at verses 5 sixth with me again. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. Would they love to pray standing the synagogues on the street corners to be seen by others? Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into a room, close a door, and pray to your father who is unseen.

Then your father who sees what's done in secret will reward you. Why do we pray? Do you ever stop to ask yourself that question? Why why you pray? It's actually a little bit uncomfortable when you really stop to think about it, potentially.

And Jesus is actually about to make it even more uncomfortable with what he's about to say. Because what he's saying here is that the Godly on 1 hand, and the hypocrites on the other actually pray for the same reason. Why do we pray? We pray for reward. Seems strange to say, but actually just says it right here.

We pray for reward and even more strange is the fact that the reward that we receive the godly and the hypocrites is the same thing. What is that reward? The reward is the praise or affection or attention of the 1 who you're focused on. Well, to put it another way, The who of who you're praying to is so intrinsically linked with the why that if you get the who wrong, the why is also gonna be wrong. Look again at these hypocrites in verse 5.

Do not be like the hypocrites user says. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others, Truly, I tell you they have received their award in full. These hippogrids only care about what others think. Looking good in front of the crowds being looked up to as the righteous ones, having the admiration of those in the synagogue in the church in society as a whole. That's what they want, and user says, they've received their award.

They want that, they're gonna get it. And I think if we're honest, that's probably a pretty tempting thing. Is it not? I mean, who doesn't want to be praised and admired and respected in at least some way in your life. If if you generally don't want that, I would love to talk to you after so we can have conversations to work at how I can get to that point.

I think it's a perfectly normal thing to want. In 1 sense. But that's why it's even more important to understand that with perfectly good initial motives, It's oh so very easy for us to slip slowly maybe without even realizing and to start twisting the wonderful gift, the wonderful privilege of prayer into something that is actually offensive to God. Some of you will know that we've got 3 kids at home, and we're trying to teach them what prayer really means. And I'm sorry to say that in our house prayer has almost become weaponized.

It's it's a little terrifying. So what often happens that dinner times will sit down and I'll say, okay, Kayla, Emilia, Nathan's 7 months old, so he gets off. He doesn't quite have to learn to pray just yet. Kaina, who's 5, Emina, you're 3. Who would like to pray?

Both hands go up. Both and what to pray. Alright? Okay. Kayla, you can pray this time.

Kayla starts off praying. Dear god. And before she's got any further than that and media, dear god. Thank you for food, amen. And then Kayla is in a rage because Emilia's cut over her, and Emilia feels great because she's actually just beaten her system's submission using the weapon of prayer.

It's awful, isn't it? How actually that can be the way things are. But it also flips its head as well because when Kayla in particular does pray, often what she says at the end is, daddy, was that a good prayer? And it's it's a hard 1 because what do you say to that? To a 5 year old who's asking daddy, is that a good prayer?

Because you want to encourage, don't you? You want to say, yes, baby girl, that that was a good prayer. But at the same time you wanna say, you're not praying to me. Don't pray for praise from your earthly father. I don't think that attitude stops when we get past 5 years old.

The desire for praise is always there. It's not even necessarily a bad thing, it just needs to have the focus shifted to be in the right direction. And that is why Jesus says, don't do that. Don't be like the hypocrites. Instead, he says, go into a room close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.

Don't make a big sort of dance about this. Don't be so taken up with what other fallible, sinful, mortal people think, be focused on your father. And then your father Your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. What is the reward for those who pray like Jesus here? You get to call Godfather.

You get an intimate loving relationship with the omni God. Your reward is him. To Jesus, this is the most precious reward imaginable, and it should be for us too. Just take a may take a moment, stop and think of all that the Lord has done for us. Gave his son.

Loved you from before time began, knit you together in your mother's womb, chose you, chased you down in your rebellion. Found you and you were lost, adopted you, cleansed you, saved you, all of this in your horrifically wretched state. What a God we have? What a privilege is to be able to call him, father, to be able to pray to him as we can. Our reward is him.

And I said that the reason why the Hippocrats pray and the God he prays is the same, it's for reward. But there's a subtle difference in the text That's actually lost in translation in our modern bibles. The word reward that's used for the Hippicrates in verse 5 is not the same in the original Greek as the word reward that's used for the godly in verse 6. So in verse 5, the word reward for the Hippocrits is a Greek word, Miston. Probably pronounced it wrong, but you understand Now, that's more in line with the idea of being rewarded for with a salary or wages for something that you've done in other words.

Something that you've earned in verse 6. The word reward for the godly is the Greek word, a Podesci, which is more akin to giving someone something out of the goodness of your own heart. In other words, it's a gift. It's not earned. It's not deserved.

It's freely given by the father. So still reward from the 1 we're focused on. But when you're praying to God with the right motives, with the right heart, it's undeserved, lavished, grace, and love. That's the reward. So why do you pray?

What reward are you looking for? Is your prayer life different at church or in front of others than it is in private? And does that say something about what you're really treasuring in life? What are you really seeking as a reward? As to why, we've got 2 more.

The next 2 are a little bit shorter. How? How are you praying? Look at verse 7. When you pray, do not keep babbling like the pagans for they think they'll be heard because of their many words.

I said at the beginning of the sermon that there are 2 risks when we start to pray in how we approach prayer. First is that we're too casual. We get the who wrong. But the second is that we're too formal, which again is a symptom of us getting the who wrong. I think that's the risk that Jesus is addressing here.

He says, do not keep babbling like the pagans. Why? Why does he say that? Well, it's not because actually praying with lots of words is wrong. Jesus isn't commanding short prayers here.

In fact, if you read through the Gospels, some of Jesus prayers are pretty long. How are you praying? Are you praying in a specific way because you think God only accepts prayers are said in a certain way? That you'll only be heard by God if you use these types of phrases or if you actually speak in this type of cadence, saying some of the things in this specific way. Jesus says, don't do that.

That's how the pagans pray. The pagans who have no concept of who God is, no relationship with the father. That's not how you pray. That's not how we pray. Now look, this is fantastic news because it means you don't have to be really wordy you're talking to God.

This isn't like a like an essay in school or in uni where you had a minimum word count or a page limit you have to hit. I was beyond awful at writing essays when I was both in school and university. It's a miracle I made out of there, to be perfectly honest. And I knew all the tricks, you know, teachers say you gotta have a it's gonna be at least 5 pages long, 500 words, how many words it's gonna And I've finished writing it and it's only like 2 50. So you're going in and you're changing the size of the margins and you're playing with the fonts and you're going through and you change highlighting the words, looking for Saurus, seeing if you can split this word into 4 words, rewriting phrases and sentences to try and make them slightly longer.

Then you hand it in and just hope for the best. That's kinda how I did things. Could you imagine if prayer was like How awful would that be? Jesus says, don't think that the reasons why your being heard in your prayer is because of how you're praying them. It doesn't have to be liturgy, that we pray although liturgy can be helpful.

It doesn't have to be packed or super long. It doesn't have to sound like you've memorized a chapter of systematic theology, and you're just regurgitating that as you pray. It doesn't have to be that way. None of these things makes God hear you. And in reality, if you really stop and think about it, there's a certain load of arrogance, isn't there when we think that way?

It's crazy. What do we what do we really think is happening here? That God is sitting on his throne. The same god who is holding the entire universe together, the very fabrics of reality in his hands, who's seen everything that's ever happened in the history of time, who's heard every word that's ever been uttered by every person who's ever lived in the history of the world. But that God is sitting on his throne hearing our prayers and is impressed.

Well, pen or substitution atonement. You managed to fit that 1 in there. Well done. Do we do we really think that's what's happening here? I mean, who do we think we are?

We've kind of we've we've lost sight, haven't we? Of who we are. We've lost sight of who he is. We don't even have the vocabulary to adequately describe the majesty of the 1 who we're praying to. There are no words that we can say that can make us worthy.

Only his word made flesh. Can make us worthy. His grace shown to us through Jesus. And that is the great, wonderful joy, and wonder of Christian prayer brothers and sisters. The the barrier for communicating with the eternal God should be infinitely high, infinitely high, impossible to scale.

And yet, by grace, it's so low. That my 5 year old can come to the Lord in prayer and speak with confidence knowing that she is heard. That is the God we're praying What a God we have? We don't need to babble like the pagans. It does nothing.

How are you praying? Are you praying to God who is so terrifying and impersonal that there's no relation ship there at all, that you feel like you have to jump through hoops to perform just to have your prayers heard. Are you putting more stock in the words that you say than in the grace that's already been shown to you through Jesus? How are you praying? Last point, hope you're with me.

What are you praying Now we get to the lord's prayer, which is the longest part of the passage, you'll be thankful to know we're not going to go through everything here. Jesus finishes off this masterclass in prayer with a blueprint almost of what we should be praying. What are you praying? Now there's way too much here for us to cover it in 1 point. Like I said, this could be a sermon series all on it, so I actually looked on the website to see if we've preached this before.

I think Pete preached on this in 20 10. Ben Reed's first ever sermon at Cornerstone. I'm not sure which first 7 Was that your first sermon ever? First sermon ever back in 20 15 was on 1 line of this prayer of Jesus's. Listen to that, it's really good.

And back in only less than a year ago, The second series of corona chronicles walked through line by line systematically taking a part and looking at this lord's prayer that we have here. You can find all those in YouTube. I really would encourage you to go and download the sermons, listen to them. Find them on YouTube, listen to their chrono chronicles. All that to say, we're not gonna be going in-depth into this sermon, into this prayer right here.

But I think it is important for us to note emphasis that Jesus puts on this very quickly. So let's look briefly at verses 9 through 13 here. Says this, this then is how you should pray, Jesus, masterclass. Our father in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debt and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil 1. What are you praying? Or what are you praying the majority of the time when you're praying? What are you praying for?

Maybe you spend a lot of time praying for your family and your friends. Maybe you will spend a lot of time praying about a difficult situation that you're currently going through at work or, you know, your friendship groups at home wherever it might actually be. Maybe you spend a lot of time thanking God for the blessings that you have in life. Maybe you spend time praying for the church. For the different ministries that we have and the people who are involved in those ministries, it's praying that God will bless that work.

Now listen, all of those things are very, very good things for us to be praying. Definitely not saying don't pray those things. But notice in Jesus blueprint here, that should not be the main focus of our prayer. Now, in most bibles, this prayer is 10 lines long. I think it was 10 lines we actually had it up on the screen earlier.

And it goes like this in most bibles. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as is in heaven. It's the first 5. And give us today our daily bread, forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors, we also want to temptations, but deliver us from the evil 1. 10 lines.

Notice how they're split. Now when Jesus preached, contrary to proper belief, he was not preaching in English. So we have to be very careful when we look at this. And I'm not saying that actually we take this transition perfectly and start dividing up our preaches, our prayers perfectly like this. However, the emphasis is clear, I think.

The first half or so of the prayer is about what. It's about God himself. Giving him praise for who he is, praising our heavenly father, giving him glory praying that he will be glorified here on Earth just as he is in heaven, and that his gospel kingdom will continue to spread. That's 50 percent of uses prayer here. I'll be honest.

When I pray, if I pray for 5 minutes and I spend 10 percent of my time praising God, for who he is and what he's done before jumping on to the laundry list, I have of things that I want from him. Just 10 percent, actually, for Steve Sims, that's pretty good. I don't think I'm the same. I hope I'm not the same. Hope I am, I hope hope hope you aren't like that.

Think it's fair to say that actually sometimes, maybe we can be a little self absorbed in our prayers. I had 1 anger and minister on this subject of prayer say this and I thought it was helpful. He said prayer that doesn't start there and they're being focused on God. Prayer that doesn't start there, is in danger of concentrating on ourselves, and soon it stops being prayer altogether, and collapses into the random thoughts fears and longings of our minds. That is not prayer brothers and sisters.

But do we find ourselves doing that? Breaking with the blueprint. And spending more time asking God to satisfy us with things. They're giving him praise for who he is and being satisfied side with just him. That's the first part of user's prayer.

God first, and then the second part is us are second. And notice what he's praying here. He's asking for help to live godly lives and then for forgiveness when we don't. That's what he's asking for. Now, fortunately, we have a loving heavenly father who loves to hear everything we bring to him.

He's not shy, or we don't need to be shy rather I bring anything to him. We can ask all kinds of things. Jesus isn't saying, don't bring trivial things to God. That's not what he's saying here. It's not wrong for you to pray about these smaller things.

But let's not lose focus on the what and the how and to whom we should be praying here. The structure of prayer is actually the same as the structure of what our lives should be. God first in his glory and ourselves last. Who do you pray to? Why do you pray?

How do you pray? What do you pray? That's Jesus's masterclass on prayer. If we start with the who, then we get the who right, then the rest by God's grace will fall into place. Who is the lord you're praying to?

He's our father in heaven. He's the 1 who loved us so much that he sent his son, Jesus, to die as a ransom for each and every 1 of us here, to buy us back. We might be able to pray to him and call him father, to have that privilege, that honor. And as we understand, the wonder of that will long to please him. And understand that actually there's nothing that we can do to earn anything from Now it is to be so taken up with praise with him that it will flow into our prayer lives.

And hopefully, in time, by God's grace, slowly, very, very slowly. We might just start maybe by God's grace, praying a little bit like our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ right here. Have any father. You are so unbelievably awesome and powerful and knowledgeable that our mind boggles when we really stop to think about it. The very fact that we can come to you speak to you, the creator God, who is able to do all things, who is seen and knows everything.

Is incredible to us. Please, lord, help us remember that amazing privilege that we have here to be able to refer to you as father, to talk to you as 1 who loves us deeply. What a joy that is, Laura. Please help us to have that will be reflected in our prayer lives going forward. We need help to do this, God, and we long to be able to give you the praise that you deserve in our prayers.

So please help us with that. Please forgive us for the times when actually we are flippant, when we are casual and we don't speak to you with the reference that you deserve we thank you so much, Lord, that there is an intimate relationship on offer for us. If we just accept the wonderful work that you've done through our largest Christ in cross. We praise you so much for that, and we pray that you will continue to speak to us through your word and help us to pray to you as we should. Jesus's name, amen.